A day in the life of a haunted restaurant.A day in the life of a haunted restaurant.A day in the life of a haunted restaurant.
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Did you know
- TriviaBusy Bistro, the restaurant seen in the film, was a real restaurant that was in operation at the time of production. It closed shortly after shooting wrapped.
- ConnectionsFeatured in The Reel Theater: Hampshire: A Ghost Story (2012)
Featured review
This is right up my alley!
I was really pleasantly surprised by this, given its low budget and obscurity (and some pretty negative reviews, to boot).
It's a very ambitious and heavily stylized ghost story, which depends a lot on darkness and/or obscured vision (be warned!), as well as its classical-music soundtrack, in order to convey its atmosphere. It can be eye-rollingly over the top at times, but when it works, it works very well.
It's far from perfect, I will say; I can put up with the scares that don't quite come off (there's a sequence with snakes and spiders that is more silly than scary, for example), as that's almost an inevitability of low-budget film. Instead, most of the problems I had were with characters just not acting in believable ways - most egregious was probably the entire character of Kreese, who was poorly written and maybe as a result not terribly well acted. (Hint: if you ever have a restaurant manager aggressively verbally assault customers because he didn't hear them come in, you should fire that manager immediately.) But overall, I really did like this. I'll admit I'm prejudiced, because this is a kind of film I really love: the Bad Place movie. We don't need to understand the logic of the Bad Place, all we need to know is that it eats people, and has a voracious appetite. I only ever cared much about one of the characters (Matt, who gets kind of a cool backstory/history), but I cared a lot about how scary the place was. The logic of the film overall is sketchy in places and just plain bizarre in others, but the surreal nature of what happens in and around the Bad Place is part of what ultimately made this effective for me.
Your mileage may vary.
It's a very ambitious and heavily stylized ghost story, which depends a lot on darkness and/or obscured vision (be warned!), as well as its classical-music soundtrack, in order to convey its atmosphere. It can be eye-rollingly over the top at times, but when it works, it works very well.
It's far from perfect, I will say; I can put up with the scares that don't quite come off (there's a sequence with snakes and spiders that is more silly than scary, for example), as that's almost an inevitability of low-budget film. Instead, most of the problems I had were with characters just not acting in believable ways - most egregious was probably the entire character of Kreese, who was poorly written and maybe as a result not terribly well acted. (Hint: if you ever have a restaurant manager aggressively verbally assault customers because he didn't hear them come in, you should fire that manager immediately.) But overall, I really did like this. I'll admit I'm prejudiced, because this is a kind of film I really love: the Bad Place movie. We don't need to understand the logic of the Bad Place, all we need to know is that it eats people, and has a voracious appetite. I only ever cared much about one of the characters (Matt, who gets kind of a cool backstory/history), but I cared a lot about how scary the place was. The logic of the film overall is sketchy in places and just plain bizarre in others, but the surreal nature of what happens in and around the Bad Place is part of what ultimately made this effective for me.
Your mileage may vary.
helpful•02
- Otto-20
- Dec 24, 2012
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- Hampshire: A Ghost Story
- Filming locations
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- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime1 hour 22 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.78 : 1
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